Warlords of Draenor

When Blizzard announced “The Light Within” tier talent for Holy Paladins at level 100, many people were pretty excited about the idea of being able to place a Beacon of Light on each tank. However, in the current form, if a healer swaps beacon from one person to another, it just overwrites the previous one. But what about when there are two?

Blizzard has confirmed that currently, placing a third Beacon of Light will overwrite the oldest Beacon that was placed on a player. So if you place a Beacon on Tank A, then the second on Tank B, but say you have a third tank or a player soaking damage, and you then place a Beacon on that player, your Tank A (who has the oldest Beacon between Tank A and Tank B) would lose the Beacon.

Quick question. What if I cast beacon of light on someone else with duel BOL talent in WOD? Will the first gone or i may choose?Celastalon: If you BoL when you already have 2 out, it’ll remove it from the older existing one. Somewhat awkward; alternative is two buttons. (Source)

It is an interesting idea to have two buttons, but I doubt it would really be that big of a deal to replace a Beacon if you lose the first. On the other hand, I can definitely see a wipe occuring and a raid leader asking “Why didn’t Tank A have a Beacon?” when he looks at incoming heals prior to a lack of healing death, to which the Pally will go “Uh oh”.

With all the changes with haste and haste breakpoints for Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard answered some questions about how haste will affect Paly’s Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield in WoD.

With all the changes to haste breakpoints in Warlords, will Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield continue to work as on live?Eternal Flame is a HoT like any other, so the changes apply. Sacred Shield is unusual; intend will be the same, may be custom. (Source)

So Eternal Flame will be affected by haste changes, but we could still see some changes made to Sacred Shield before the expansion drops.

Ever since Blizzard announced that there would no longer be any spirit on the majority of healing gear, aside from trinkets and jewelry, many healers have been concerned about what this might mean for healers and their mana regen (eep!)

One of the ideas raised is for haste to affect how quickly mana regens, since the value of spirit definitely varies between the healer classes. Blizzard answered a few more questions about the role of spirit in healer gear for Warlords of Draenor.

What about removing Spirit and let Haste be the main factor of mana regen? Throwing ideas around. @CelestalonSpirit’s value varies significantly between classes. One contributor is what the other secondaries do for regen. (Source)We’re looking at potential changes in that regard, to standardize that better between classes. (Source)

What about Spirit? On clothes? On Jewelry? Some DPS casters are using them on rings/neck at least.No spirit on armor may involve increasing the amount of spirit on non-armor. That makes it more complex to change existing armor. We recognize the problem and are planning potential solutions, but aren’t ready to give specifics yet. (Source)

Wouldn’t increasing the amount of regen spirit gives instead avoid that issue?That may be part of it, but we may change how we itemize non-armor pieces. Just complicates the issue. (Source)
If healers have enough regen with 1-2 spirit pieces in first raid tier, what happens to mana regen later on?“Enough” is a very ethereal concept. It also varies with other gear. And definitely not from 1-2 items in the first tier. (Source)
Then between 3 and 6 (of 7) slots. If item stats triple again, will only need max 2 spirit pieces in final tier. Also, sockets.Sounds like you’re ignoring the fact that “enough” changes between tiers. (Source)

Anyone else a tad bit concerned about the spirit and mana changes for WoD? I remember sucking mana at the start of Pandaria, and at the start of Cataclysm, and praying to the Mana Tide and Hymn of Hope Gods for more mana.

Mastery hasn’t been a very strong stat for holy priests, particularly when there is a lot of overhealing going on (which there usually is, unless a guild is deliberately underhealing a boss). Blizzard answered some questions about the role of mastery for priests and if it is being reworked for WoD.

Any chance on HPriest mastery being relooked at for WoD? Maybe turn all the overheals from it into something?Echo of Light us something we balance assuming it’s going to be more overheal than average. More of regen than healing in design. (Source)

It’s not really a choice when it maths out to be 25% or less of the value of other secondaries in typical 25H.That only sounds accurate when significantly overhealing, and only if your goal is topping the healing meters. (Source)If you’re not overhealing, and your goal is minimizing deaths, mastery can work well. (Source)

And when in the last 3 expacs has there not been significant overhealing most of the time even progression?I’m referring to using more healers than you need. Doing so results in RShams looking weak, and Discs strong. (Source)

Sounds as though it will be another one of those things that will work well earlier in the upcoming expansion, similar to how priests were stronger at the start of this expansion too.

Resto Shamans have a love/hate relationship with mastery. It is great if you are working on progression while also underhealing a fight. But throw a couple disc priests or an extra healer into the mix, and mastery is pretty useless unless things go sideways and the raid is about to die from some mechanic a raid team member screwed up.

Shamans have been hoping for a change to mastery for ages, and it kind of looks as though Blizzard doesn’t have intentions of changing it at this time.

IMO, Deep Healing would be good as a situational/optional talent, but too situational for a masteryDeep Healing is indeed situational. Strong for healing people that need healing. Weak for healing people that don’t. (Source)

Having Deep Healing as a talent would be great, so Shamans could switch it up when the raid is running down a healer or on progression. However, with stats being the way it is next expansion, it would literally require a second set of healing gear – one for mastery and one that will likely be haste and/or crit. However, if mastery continues to be the go-to stat for Elemental Shamans, it could get use as a second spec gear set for Deep Healing and/or Elemental Shaman.

For Mistweaver monks a bit on the hesitant side about the changes in relation to Mistweavers and fistweaving can be rest assured that they will still be considered melee regardless of stance. And it does make sense, as you don’t want to have a mistweaver switching stances and forgetting he or she needs to run in or run out to do it…. I can just imagine all the very unhappy raid leaders when a Mistweaver forgets to run out and gets targeted for something that screws the entire melee.

.Given the changes to Mistweaving/fistweaving you discussed before, will this also change based upon healing stances?Mistweavers will count as melee, regardless of stance. Don’t want them afraid to swap between stances. (Source)

This could change by the time Warlords of Draenor comes around, but this is the current plan.

This is a bit of a change where Blizzard had previously said:

For the new mistweaver stances, will MWs still count as melee in both?Undecided, but leaning toward yes. Don’t want someone Fistweaving to feel like they can’t swap back to Mistweaving in emergency (Source)

Ease of swapping will be nice, when a healer dies or massive damage goes out, you want your Mistweaver to be able to pick up the slack.

Druid’s Glyph of Efflorescence has definitely had their fans this tier, tying their Efflorescence to a specific placement of their mushrooms rather than off of a person. This means Druids can effectively target Efflorescence to a specific place – such as tanks, melee, or range – without worrying that their target has moved somewhere odd (which always seems to happen in LFR!).

Unfortunately, Blizzard is feeling that the healing is on the strong side for what is essentially passive healing, so don’t be surprised to see it tuned down a bit.

– how do you feel the Glyph of Efflo is working? Are we going to see it kept in place for WoD, or should we expect changes?We like the concept. It’s probably too powerful for something so passive, so we may adjust tuning. That goes for all healers in general though; we want to time down passive healing and smart healing across the board. Most healing should come from actives. (Source)

Sounds as though we won’t see a change until the pre-WoD patch or the drop of Warlords though.

Other than armor, all stats will be useful to healers in Warlords of Draenor – although I can see armor sometimes being useful in specific situations (my undergeared healer had to STAM flask – yes, really – to survive later Accelerates on heroic Thok).

Will there be any secondary stats besides armor that will be useless to healers?Nope, all secondaries besides Bonus Armor will be useful to healers. (Source)

From what I gather tank will have a unique secondary (armor) and healers (spirit), do DPS get a unique secondary?Current plan is no. (Source)

With all the changes being made to Mistweaver monks (new stance for fistweaving,Crane Stance), Blizzard will make it easy to swap between the two stances. The idea is that a Monk can easily switch when high damage unexpectedly goes out, or for phase changes, but not switch every few spells.

Is the intent with fist stance that you pick it and stay in it the whole fight or swap based on high/low damage phases?Swap based on phase is fine. Swap in between every few GCDs is not fine. (Source)

That said, I am sure once PTR hits that people will be testing out the new stances to find the max healing output versus damage that will likely include some stance switching rotation, but even if that is the case, Blizzard could change it to be “less efficient”.

Mistweavers will officially get a new healing stance specifically for fistweaving in Warlords of Draenor. The new stance is called Crane Stance.

Monks will be able to switch between the two of them easily to be able to heal when the situation warrants it on the fly, then go back to fistweaving when things stabalize.

Are you removing stance of the fierce tiger for mistweavers/brewmasters in WoD?Yes. Mistweavers get a new Crane stance for Fistweaving, in addition to Serpent stance. (Source)

Crane is healer, Serpent is dd, so why Serpent Stance is for healing and Crane’s is for damage? Honestly, because we switched Mistweavers to Serpent for aesthetic reasons during MoP development (Mistweaver heals = Jade color). (Source)Funny story: Early on, Mistweaver heals were patterned after the Crane, so many of them were red. That felt somewhat odd… (1/2) (Source)The oddest one was Spinning Crane Kick. It was red and had feathers flying out of it. It got nicknamed “Poultry Slaughter”. (2/2) (Source)

We had heard originally at the beginning of December about the new stances, but hadn’t heard much about it other than there would be two stances for Mistweavers, one for strictly healing while the other is for fistweaving.

Curious. Which is a larger concern going into 6.0, lack of control with Monk healing, or their lack of need for spirit. Also What do you plan on doing with fistweaving?Both are large concerns that we intend to address. Preserving Fistweaving, but it’ll be a separate stance.

Wait wait wait, by seperate stance do you mean SotFT? Will FW be energy based?No, new stance. No, still mana. No, not at all like Chakra.

Are you aiming to keep the same seamless fusion between DPS and healing. I miss 5.0 fw.What do you mean by ‘seamless fusion’? If you mean Jab-Jab-Uplift, no. No cherrypicking.

The idea of stance dancing to do the same thing seems kind of daunting. I never want to go back to Jab Jab Uplift, I just like how the two styles integrate easily.The problem is cherrypicking. Don’t want to allow you to pick the best parts of both.
Thus, we need to have some cost to switching modes. Doesn’t take much; 1 GCD may suffice.

Would FW still maintain the “DPS healer” model that we were sold on? Will it be “viable?”Yes. Separate stance allows us to balance it separately.

Is this going to make mistweaving gimped w/o stance swapping to fist?Gimped? At what? Maximum HPS is purely Mistweaving, no Fistweaving.